BusinessDay 19 Dec 2017

34 BUSINESS DAY
C002D5556
Tuesday 19 December 2017
NEWS
Opera enters Nigeria’s mobile money market with...
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tion, according to data from the
Nigerian Communications Commission
(NCC).
Pioneers such as Paga, which
got the first license in 2011, after it
was launched in 2009, have reported
impressive adoption numbers
like 6 million users on its platform.
Paystack another mobile payment
firm recently announced it has hit
N1 billion in monthly transactions.
Nonetheless, as impressive as
those numbers may seem, the
majority sentiment among experts
in the mobile payment space is
that investors are yet to scratch
the surface of the potential. If and
when it is finally cracked, analysts
project that it will engender new
developments in every sector of
the Nigerian economy. Already
Food inflation sticky at 20.3 % despite FG Agric...
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fell by 0.01 percentage points to
15.90 percent in November, from
15.91 per cent in October.
This is the tenth consecutive
time in 2017 that inflation has fallen.
“Sticky food inflation could still
be as a result of low production in
the agricultural sector, as agriculture’s
contribution to the nation’s
GDP is still low. The production
level is low resulting to higher
demand over supply, hence influencing
the increase in the prices of
food,” said Johnson Chukwu, CEO
Cowry Asset Management Ltd.
The rise in the food index was
caused by increases in prices of
bread and cereal, milk, cheese,
eggs, coffee, tea, cocoa, fish and
L-R: President Muhammadu Buhari; Modupe Irele, ambassador of Nigeria to France, and Olukayode Pitan,
managing director, Bank of Industry, at the sidelines of the One Planet Summit, held in Paris.
Interswitch, Etranzact, SystemSpecs CEOs may...
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once you have tenured 10 years
and above, you are compulsorily
required to exit the Board for
at least 3 years. When this rule
came in 2009, it was only applied
only to the commercial banks.
“Now that Switches and Payments
Solution Service Providers
(PSSPs) are occupying key roles
within the economy, everyone
is getting scared of what the lack
of transparency and corporate
governance could have on the
economic sectors like agriculture
are beginning to witness its disruption
with agritechs such as
Farmcrowdy etc. Mobile is also
powering the fintech landscape in
the country, creating new jobs and
new businesses.
Opera already own a payment
platform called OperaPay or OPay
which it launched late this year.
OPay is a web application for buying
airtime in Nigeria and Kenya.
The payment app is within the
Opera browser. However, users
review of the OPay has not been favourable,
particularly usability and
customer experience of the app.
Sources in the payment space
that spoke to BusinessDay said
Opera’s coming into mobile money
could have significant impact in
respect of financial inclusion and
Oil and fats, which is similar to the
items that pushed the rise in the
food index, in October 2017.
The Central Bank of Nigeria
(CBN) on November 17, 2015
established the Anchor Borrowers’
Programme (ABP). The Programme
evolved from the
consultations with stakeholders
comprising Federal Ministry of
Agriculture & Rural Development,
State Governors, millers of agricultural
produce, and small holder
farmers to boost agricultural
production and non-oil exports in
the face of unpredictable crude oil
prices and its resultant effect on the
revenue profile of Nigeria.
The CBN disbursed about
N43.92 billion to local farmers
financial ecosystem,” an industry
source told BusinessDay.
Interswitch was formed in
2002 and has had the same CEO,
Mitchell Elegbe, since inception.
Two of Interswitch directors,
Akeem Lawal and Charles Ifedi
could also be affected if CBN
implements this rule. However,
Ifedi would be leaving Interswitch
by January 2018.
Mitchell, Akeem and Charles
own a tiny share of the company
while the rest is held by institutional
investors such as Helios Capital, TA
general payments as a whole. To
start with, Opera Software which
recently changed ownership,
could leverage on the enormous
resources it currently has. The
Norwegian-based company is
behind the widely popular Opera
Browsers that most feature phones
come with. The company has more
than 350 million users worldwide.
It will be recalled that the Central
Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and
the NCC recently granted telecom
operators the go-ahead to create
Special-Purpose Vehicle (SPV)
that would be allowed to operate
mobile money.
“Everyone is of the opinion that
banks and smaller players made
a mess of mobile money. Banks
had no incentives while smaller
fintechs do not have the money for
coverage or the expertise. Telcos
have both,” our source said.
through the (ABP), an agricultural
intervention programme created
to build a link between food processing
companies and local farmers
of agricultural commodities,
providing farm inputs in kind and
cash (for farm labour) to small
holder farmers to boost production
of farm commodities, stabilize
inputs supply to agro processors
and address the country’s negative
balance of payments on food.
“Government intervention
in agricultural sector is yet to be
pronounced as expected due to
low level of production of food,
high level of productivity will be
achieved with more capital investment
in the sector. All year continuous
farming should be welcomed
by investing in irrigation practices,”
Johnson concluded.
Associates, Zenith Bank and others.
Etranzact (formerly Sybase
Nigeria) was founded in 2003 by
Valentine Obi who has been the
CEO ever since. Etranzact has
major investors such as Access
Bank Plc, African Finance Corporation
(AFC) as core investors.
SystemSpecs was founded
in 1992 with John Obaro being
the sole owner and CEO since
inception.
One of the recent issues that is
making regulators restless about
corporate governance has to do
the brazen product launches
and partnerships the likes of
Relief for Nigerians as PENGASSAN suspends...
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motoring public as long queues
of vehicles resurfaced at filling
stations, extending to highways
roads, in major cities, including
Lagos, and Abuja, thereby worsening
traffic flow.
The strike was called by
PENGASSAN to protest what it
termed “unfair labour practices
and seemingly untameable posture
of some indigenous oil and
gas companies and marginal
field operators,” citing Seconde,
an oil firm in particular.
Fortune Obi, national public
relations officer of PENGASSAN,
speaking, Monday, on the decision
to suspend the strike, said it
followed the intervention of the
labour minister and Department
of State Security (DSS).
“Also the management of
Neconde has offered a letter of
recall to the sacked employees
of the company,” Obi said on
Monday.
The penchant of oil workers
unions in Nigeria to resort
to strikes which paralyses the
economy to press home every
demand or express discontent at
every unfavourable action reeks
of sheer economic sabotage,
analysts have told BusinessDay.
Analysts say internal disagreements
between oil companies
and their staff should not
halt the country’s economy.
“A situation where one of
the employers in the sector has
decided to relieve certain people
from employment and you are
now fighting for those people
and saying until they take them
back, you will proceed on strike
without finding why they were
relieved, if they were guilty of
certain offences or breached
their own contracts and give an
ultimatum for strike amounts to
abuse of power,” says Olu Akinola,
a legal expert and managing
partner of Stonewaters Lawfirm.
Speaking on the issue, Henry
Biose, a petroleum economics
and policy researcher with the
University of Port Harcourt, said
the best practice is for parties to
a dispute to come to the negotiation
table. “For me, an internal
disagreement should not lead to
national strike; it is like holding
the government to ransom.
“Every company is tailored
towards profit making so in a
measure of trying to optimise their
system by laying off people, the
union should only make sure the
companies are following the prescribed
labour laws,” said Biose.
But Nigeria’s oil workers see
which made the Central Bank
to fine Interswitch and Etranzact
N70million and N450million
respectively for illegal international
money transfer.
Etranzact consequently made
a loss of N6million for third-quarter
(Q3) 2017. The company had
reported a profit before tax of
N178.65million for the same period
in 2016. But the technology company’s
revenue rose to N2.9billion
for the third quarter of 2017, against
N2.5billion recorded in the corresponding
period of 2016.
Another challenge has been
the poor performance of many
strikes as the only solution to
labour disputes. Since 2015,
these oil unions have embarked
upon a half a dozen industrial
actions and none has been completely
resolved. Strikes are often
planned at peak demand period,
usually towards the end of year
to complete the shakedown,
BusinessDay gathers.
Analysts also attribute part
of the blame to the government
who has not shown commitment
to keeping agreements in some
disputes.
“Government should also
honour their own obligation but
when strikes are called for this
kind of reason (internal labour
dispute), government can go to
court to compel them to do perform
their duties,” said Akinola.
Meanwhile the Nigerian National
Petroleum Corporation
(NNPC) has embarked upon
a fuel buying spree, offering a
potential respite to European
refineries and storage terminals
threatened by an oversupply that
has battered margins.
Shipping and trade sources
told Reuters that imports of
gasoline to West Africa, including
Nigeria, from Europe were
expected to top 1 million tonnes
in December, compared with
700,000 tonnes in October and
roughly 800,000 tonnes in November.
The strike had led to panic
buying of petroleum products
across the country, with
many filling stations resorting
to hoarding thereby creating
artificial scarcity.
Checks by BusinessDay in
Lagos metropolis on Monday
morning showed that some filling
stations especially around
Alimosho and Ojo local government
areas of the state had
started selling above the regulated
price of N145 per litre just
as hoodlums took advantage of
the rowdy situations to demand
bribe from motorists who were
seen in fierce struggle to gain
access into such filling stations.
The suspension of the strike
is seen a relief to the motoring
public and travellers who were
already feeling the pain, for the
hours the action lasted.
PENGASSEN largely consists
of oil workers in upstream companies
while the Nigeria Union
of Petroleum and Natural Gas
Workers (NUPENG) operates
in the downstream sector but
a disagreement with either the
government or any company in
either sector can lead to collective
strike action.
of the switches and payment providers
with some going offline for
days or losing data. For instance,
the period for most banks to reconcile
a failed point-of-sale (POS)
transaction most times extend
beyond two weeks triggering fear
and loss of confidence within the
payment system.
Banks have been complaining
of reconciliation issues for
years without respite. Analysts
believe that lack of oversight
and independent risk and governance
management may also
be responsible for much of the
poor performance.